The Black Angels
Passover
[Light in the Attic; 2006]
If originality were the only important thing in music, it would be necessary to invent a new grade to describe the Black Angels’ abject failure– maybe something in Cyrillic. But originality’s not always all it’s cracked up to be, as anyone who tried to get into Matisyahu can attest. Like seasoned trackers, these Texas-based psych-rockers gingerly place their steps directly in the petrified footprints left by the Velvet Underground and the slightly fresher ones of Spacemen 3, following the path without disturbing its flora and fauna. "Young Men Dead" threads a hollowly booming lead through a rudimentary fuzz-groove; "Call to Arms" blisses out languorously for upwards of ten sunburned minutes; "Black Grease" reduces the blues to one nasty lick pickled in malarial distortion. It’s like a Civil War reenactment– all the actual gore is long since splattered and the outcome is predetermined, but for the nostalgic, the bloodthirsty, and the monumentally stoned, a deep pleasure resides in the faithful reproduction. And who doesn’t like an excuse to dress up in silly clothes en masse?
It’s not like the Black Angels are the only band un-reconstructing druggy drone-rock decades past the sell-by date. They’re not even the only ones doing it with "Black" in their name– you’ve got Black Mountain and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Brian Jonestown Massacre, which almost looks like Black Jonestown Massacre if you squint, and are drunk. Psych-rock generally takes one of two paths to derangement: intricate sensory overload or brutally stripped and repetitive sensory deprivation. The Black Angels opt for the latter, wrangling reverb-drenched Sonic Boom guitars over plodding percussion, sloshing buckets of soupy, shrapnel-filled bass, and Farfisa injected with photosensitive radioactive dyes. The slo-mo detonation of "The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven" gradually dissolves into a spray of sparks, and "The Prodigal Sun" flickers and rattles towards a riotously overdriven fade to black.
Sluggishness is this sort of music’s métier, but there has to be a nervous, jangled intensity beneath the sloth to make it work, and Passover ratchets up the sick with every clangorous chord. It’s a long, darkly iridescent screw, glittering feverishly, boring deeper and deeper into the weirdly giddy wartime terror associated with the Doors and Apocalypse Now. Alex Maas’ voice covers the sliver-sized range of emotion between apathetic anxiety and utter dread. "You send me overseas / And put the fear in me", he drones flatly over the flanged guitar meltdown of the hat-tippingly titled "The First Vietnam War". Far from trailblazing, Passover nevertheless implies that the Black Angels like to blaze until they see trails.
Posted to Pitchfork by Brian Howe on May 24, 2006.